Waterford city on wikipedia

merlante

I just expanded and revamped the Waterford city article on wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterford

It had been in a pretty poor state, and had been left behind by other Irish city articles. In this day and age when anybody wants to find out anything about anything, the chances are, they'll have a quick search on wikipedia for it. More people are probably reached by Waterford's wikipedia article than Waterford Crystal's marketing or anything the city council does. Effectively it is as important to the city's image as the state of the city's roads, approaches, civic areas, facilities and so on.

What I've done is I've revamped the old article by re-writing the introduction and adding more headings for different aspects of the city's infrastructure, culture, etc., so it should be much easier to add information than it was before. However, (I know) there are plenty of mistakes and omissions. In particular, the article needs a Waterford city crest designed by an independent artist who agrees to its use on wikipedia. It also needs a few more photographs of the city to illustrate different sections.

So, I would encourage you all to go along, take a look, fix mistakes if you see any, and add content where you feel it is lacking. It only takes a few minutes, and it's fun.

Sully

Good job. Wasnt aware for sure if the new cinema was coming to Waterford, but your article linked to the offical site which confirmed it will be opening in Waterford in the Summer!

Cheers

AdMMM

It's something that I've looked at and considered at once or twice but never quite felt up to the mammoth task. Excellent job anyway, and now that it's more structured, I may add a thing or two about it in the future.

jmcc

Nice work.
The City channel thing - that's really a Dublin channel with a few local Waterford programmes rather than a Waterford channel.

Regards...jmcc

merlante

Thanks lads. I've been putting it off for ages hoping that somebody else would do it, but it was annoying me every time I looked at it.

I'm glad to see that some of you might now add stuff to it. That was the idea of all the headings. The original article was too hard to add things too and it needed a (painful) revamp.

There are other sections that remain to be added, such as Politics (city council, dail members, etc.) for example. Feel more than free to jump in there people.

Concerning the city channel thing, I'm aware it began as a Dublin thing, but they certainly talk about it like it's a separate thing on the website, and anyway, they have local notices and so on.

merlante

Legend, just noticed that somebody added a Politics section!

Bards

congrats on the 800th post!! and well done for the article

jmcc

merlante wrote:

Concerning the city channel thing, I'm aware it began as a Dublin thing, but they certainly talk about it like it's a separate thing on the website, and anyway, they have local notices and so on.

A Dublin channel with local Waterford input? I added Ernest Walton to the Waterford people list (Ireland's only Nobel Prize winner in Physics). Also one of the Waterford people there (Eugene Byrne) looks like link spam. Hell I'm even more famous than he is.

Should that Upthedeise Waterford Slang book get a reference in the reference section - perhaps in a section on Waterford accents and linguistics? (The Uvular R is perhaps one of the main distinguishing features of the Waterford accent. (We pronounce it "ur" due to the Norman influence where it is often pronouced "ar" elsewhere.)

Regards...jmcc

mike65

Its just struck me that the page is only for the City, and I can't even find a county page.

Doh edit - just found it via google.

Mike.

AdMMM

merlante wrote:

Legend, just noticed that somebody added a Politics section!

Aye, that was me .

Also, I plan on adding a sports section over the next few days giving a brief description of sports played in Waterford and their following and describing the sports and clubs in a bit more detail in a parent sports article.

merlante

|.Murderer.| wrote:

Aye, that was me .

Also, I plan on adding a sports section over the next few days giving a brief description of sports played in Waterford and their following and describing the sports and clubs in a bit more detail in a parent sports article.

Spiffing lads!

A sports section is much needed indeed, and I am not the person to do it.

Daysha

if i get the chance i'll start up the sports section in the next day or two. thats probably the most important thing the page needs at the moment.

Bards

how about the Blaa brought over by the French hugo's... maybe someone would like to submit a paragraph or two devoted to our famous bread.

merlante

Bards wrote:

how about the Blaa brought over by the French hugo's... maybe someone would like to submit a paragraph or two devoted to our famous bread.

There has been a blaa article for a long time. Think it's linked from the bottom of the Waterford city page. I was thinking of putting in a 'trivia' section or something and mentioning things like the blaa and the goats of Bilberry, etc.

Incidentally, both the blaa and the goats have been attributed to the Hugenots.

Bards

My apologies.. didn't see the Blaa article.... interesting fact about the goats though..

merlante

Bards wrote:

My apologies.. didn't see the Blaa article.... interesting fact about the goats though..

Indeed, there's a Leargas, viewable from the RTE website (with a search), that explains all about the Bilberry goats, or the French goats, as they have been called traditionally. Extinct everywhere else in Europe except for Waterford city apparently! What are the chances?

I think I'll do a bit on wikipedia about them if nobody beats me to it, or hasn't already.

Incidentally, deise59, if you are going to do a very big sports sections than make a new article and link to the article from a small section on the Waterford city page. There are so many headings that the article could get out of control otherwise.

Jambo

Very intersting to see that there have been a good few imputs on the wikipedia waterford entry in other languages ! ( Not that I can understand most of them but looking at the layout and pics contained they seem to be fairly independent fthe the orig article in english )

merlante

Jambo wrote:

Very intersting to see that there have been a good few imputs on the wikipedia waterford entry in other languages ! ( Not that I can understand most of them but looking at the layout and pics contained they seem to be fairly independent fthe the orig article in english )

Until last week, the German article was far more comprehensive and better written than the English one! For shame! It was a bit touristy though, since there was a bias toward the sort of thing that German's would want to know about Waterford.

Comparing with other cities, Galway for example, is well developed in German. Another benefit of a university! In the pre-amble it says something along the lines of, 'in terms of culture, etc., Galway is second only to Dublin'! Don't think they've tried to pull that one on the English article yet. Limerick's article is rubbish though.

Roen

Set of pics by Joe Cashin of the Bilberry goats here
You may be allowed use them if you contact him and ask permission.

Sully

That article on Waterford Airport seems out-of-date, if im not mistaken.. (Sligtly off-topic, sorry).

There are more planes then Aer Arann, if im not mistaken?

merlante

Sully04 wrote:

That article on Waterford Airport seems out-of-date, if im not mistaken.. (Sligtly off-topic, sorry).

There are more planes then Aer Arann, if im not mistaken?

Didn't think there were any other carriers. Although something about the air-sea rescue should go in there...

Sully

It seems the Airports website is out-of-date also, as it lists other carriers.None of which refer to Waterford Airport, apart from Aer Areann of course!

Bards

Just been announced this afternoon. From May flights to Malaga, Bordeau, Faroe, Amsterdam and possibly Berlin

with an airline I believe called something like flyeu.... can't remember the name..

merlante

Bards wrote:

Just been announced this afternoon. From May flights to Malaga, Bordeau, Faroe, Amsterdam and possibly Berlin

with an airline I believe called something like flyeu.... can't remember the name..

Sounds great.

You mean this crowd: http://flyeu.vaflash.com/

fricatus

merlante wrote:

Sounds great.

You mean this crowd: http://flyeu.vaflash.com/

I think you'll find that's a virtual airline, "run" by people who play Microsoft Flight Simulator or something similar.

I'm sure they could arrange virtual flights into Waterford

Minto

The Tramore page could do with a bit of an update to as to would the Dungarvan one. Maybe when the Waterford one is done, we could do some work on those pages.

I'd do it, but i've never edited a wikipedia page, nor do I know how to.

merlante

fricatus wrote:

I think you'll find that's a virtual airline, "run" by people who play Microsoft Flight Simulator or something similar.

I'm sure they could arrange virtual flights into Waterford

Well I suppose beggars can't be choosers.

jmcc

Some of the entries seem to attract people who vandalise them. Also someone added a mention of luncheon meat (Red Lead) in blaas being a particular favourite of Waterford people only to have some non-Waterforder remove it as vandalism. I had to revert it and add an explanation. Also there's a section on the People's Park that doesn't exactly meet the neutral point of view (NPOV) requirements of Wikipedia. We need to keep an eye on the Waterford pages.

Regards...jmcc

merlante

jmcc wrote:

Some of the entries seem to attract people who vandalise them. Also someone added a mention of luncheon meat (Red Lead) in blaas being a particular favourite of Waterford people only to have some non-Waterforder remove it as vandalism. I had to revert it and add an explanation. Also there's a section on the People's Park that doesn't exactly meet the neutral point of view (NPOV) requirements of Wikipedia. We need to keep an eye on the Waterford pages.

Well done jmcc. For some bizarre reason I never actually added the Waterford article to my 'watch list', otherwise I would have spotted that stuff myself and killed it. You made the right calls, imho.

The section on slang would be better in a separate article if anywhere. People don't seem to get the fact that it's supposed to be an encyclopaedia!

Think I sorted the People's Park a few days ago.

jmcc

If anyone wants to contribute to the Waterford pages, can you please read the pages you are contributing to in order to check that the information is not already there. I've had to revert two entries so far because Blaa has its own page and Celebrities are covered by the List of Famous Waterford people. Also Wikipedia is not a link directory so please don't spam the external links sections.

I've been thinking of adding two site links on the Colloquialism section:
A link to the Mad Blaa's slang section with the sounds of various Waterford expressions and a link to Upthedeise's book on Waterford expressions. They would be far better than the patchy few entries. Anyone disagree?

Regards...jmcc